Chile Research Tools

Finding Your Ancestors' Town in Chile

Genealogical records are organized by geographical locality. Civil registration (government birth, marriage, and death records) and church records (christenings/baptisms, marriages, and burials) were kept at the local level. To search these records, you must know the town where your ancestors lived.

If you do not know your ancestors' town, follow the advice in the Wiki article, Chile Finding Town of Origin, to search a variety of records that might provide that information.

Chile Clickable Map

Regions and Provinces

Chile is divided into 15 regions, 54 provinces and 346 communes. Each region is both named and numbered (designated by a Roman Numeral). The only exception is the Santiago Metropolitan Region (Región Metropolitana de Santiago), which is designated with RM. Provinces are listed for each region.